I seem to remember reading somewhere in these messageboards, probably in a James J. post, that one-sixteenth of the Pathfinder campaign planet was represented by the large map in the campaign setting book. Is that correct?
Also, I'm curious where that map falls with regard to the equator and lines of latitude. It would help get a handle on things like seasonal changes.
<bump>
If I had to guess, projecting the Golarian map onto one of Europe and Africa, I'd probably say the mapped area runs from about +70 N -20 W in the upper left corner to about +10 N +50 W in the lower right corner. That would put the equator close to 700 miles below the bottom edge of the map.
(That assumes using Earth's prime meridian for longitude; on Golarion that might run through Absalom rather than Greenwich. Although come to think of it, if Earth's grid is used, either Westcrown or Egorian should be pretty close to the zero longitude line, and given Cheliax's dominance of the sea....)
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
...that one-sixteenth of the Pathfinder campaign planet was represented by the large map in the campaign setting book. Is that correct?
Also, I'm curious where that map falls with regard to the equator and lines of latitude. It would help get a handle on things like seasonal changes.
Yes, that is correct, and - in Earth terms - the Tropic of Cancer runs straight along the northern edge of the Mana Wastes, between Nex and Geb.
Clouds? That my friend is icecap, nuthin' but Crown of the World.
|
Yes, that is correct, and - in Earth terms - the Tropic of Cancer runs straight along the northern edge of the Mana Wastes, between Nex and Geb....that one-sixteenth of the Pathfinder campaign planet was represented by the large map in the campaign setting book. Is that correct?
Also, I'm curious where that map falls with regard to the equator and lines of latitude. It would help get a handle on things like seasonal changes.
Except that the geography is determined by the experiences of those who live there (past, present and future). That forest is as dependant on the first dead slug whose corpse provided the nutrients to fertilize that first plant as your yet concieved children are dependant on the next burger you eat. One change in possibility, one atom of carbon, one molecule of Salt can determine whether they are born with one eye or two eyes or none.
There is a reason I keep beating people over the head with the idea that the Universe is Debris of change in Possibility.
That's cool, although I have to admit, 1/16 sounds a bit small. Then again, Europe has a larger cultural hold than its landmass.
|
That's cool, although I have to admit, 1/16 sounds a bit small. Then again, Europe has a larger cultural hold than its landmass.
What? Europe has culture? mmmm...
just kidding
1/16 seems pretty good. I imagine a lot is ocean as well, though maybe not quite as much as real Earth.
I know you said James and them called that "clouds" at the top. But if that is the case, then they need to change more than the map. The Campaign Setting will need to be changed as well.
Besides, why does Golarion have to be the same size as Earth? No reason at all it can't be smaller.
Okay, I'm not sure how this works out in terms of being 1/16th of the planet's surface, but a little measuring given Iceland and the Tropic of Cancer as landmarks suggests that the Golarion map covers something like 64 deg 20 min N at the top of the map down to 14 deg 30 min N at the bottom.
Unfortunately, that doesn't agree at all with the map scale showing a length of 200 miles. One degree of latitude is 69.04 statute miles, so the distance from 20 deg N to 30 deg N should be nearly 700 miles; according to the map scale it would only be a little over 300.
Have I badly miscalculated somehow?
|
|
Okay, I'm not sure how this works out in terms of being 1/16th of the planet's surface, but a little measuring given Iceland and the Tropic of Cancer as landmarks suggests that the Golarion map covers something like 64 deg 20 min N at the top of the map down to 14 deg 30 min N at the bottom.
Unfortunately, that doesn't agree at all with the map scale showing a length of 200 miles. One degree of latitude is 69.04 statute miles, so the distance from 20 deg N to 30 deg N should be nearly 700 miles; according to the map scale it would only be a little over 300.
Have I badly miscalculated somehow?
ummm Golarion is not Earth???? maybe... so it just MIGHT be smaller?
That's a little mean, man. But yeah, I could see a scale difference. That said, if all that awesome real-estate covers only a sixteenth of the whole world, it seems like Golarion would actually be pretty big--I mean if all of that: Mwangi, Cheliax, Varisia, Taldor, if that's all contained in the space of what would be (gosh...what's 1/16th of Earth look like) the equivalent of maybe Mexico?
That seems like a pretty BIG planet...like way big.
|
That's a little mean, man. But yeah, I could see a scale difference. That said, if all that awesome real-estate covers only a sixteenth of the whole world, it seems like Golarion would actually be pretty big--I mean if all of that: Mwangi, Cheliax, Varisia, Taldor, if that's all contained in the space of what would be (gosh...what's 1/16th of Earth look like) the equivalent of maybe Mexico?
That seems like a pretty BIG planet...like way big.
According to Wikipedia, the Earth is 510,072,000 km", while Europe is 10,180,000 and the Americas (North and South) are 42, 549,000. This makes Europe about 2% of Earth's area and the Americas 8%. 1/16th is around 6% so the map of the world we have means it's about 3* the size of Europe and 3/4 the size of North and South America, at least in comparison. In short, it's quite big.
|
|
I haven't done the math but I always had the impression Golarion is quite large.
The er...Clouds...at the northern edge of the map, if they indeed are marking the Arctic Circle, or the edge of it, would be an interesting feature really. Trade routes going through thick mist of that nature and of course eventually crossing icecaps would make for some seriously creepy journeys I think.
I find this a fascinating line of inquiry.
|
|
That's a little mean, man. But yeah, I could see a scale difference. That said, if all that awesome real-estate covers only a sixteenth of the whole world, it seems like Golarion would actually be pretty big--I mean if all of that: Mwangi, Cheliax, Varisia, Taldor, if that's all contained in the space of what would be (gosh...what's 1/16th of Earth look like) the equivalent of maybe Mexico?
That seems like a pretty BIG planet...like way big.
Seriously did not mean for it to sound mean at all. sorry :)
The easiest way to deal with it is to take earth out of the equation completely. Earth has nothing to do with how big Golarion is. What we see on that map is roughly 1/16th of the world of Golarion. Probably a bit less ocean and we have no idea really how big the other land masses are.
|
|
According to Wikipedia, the Earth is 510,072,000 km", while Europe is 10,180,000 and the Americas (North and South) are 42, 549,000. This makes Europe about 2% of Earth's area and the Americas 8%. 1/16th is around 6% so the map of the world we have means it's about 3* the size of Europe and 3/4 the size of North and South America, at least in comparison. In short, it's quite big.That's a little mean, man. But yeah, I could see a scale difference. That said, if all that awesome real-estate covers only a sixteenth of the whole world, it seems like Golarion would actually be pretty big--I mean if all of that: Mwangi, Cheliax, Varisia, Taldor, if that's all contained in the space of what would be (gosh...what's 1/16th of Earth look like) the equivalent of maybe Mexico?
That seems like a pretty BIG planet...like way big.
did some quick measurements and the map is roughly 2,160 miles wide and 2,880 miles tall. For an area of 6,220,800 square miles.
Earth's surface area is about 196,935,000 square miles. 1/16th of earth's surface area would be 12,308,437 square miles.
So, if the map is 1/16th the surface area of Golarion, it's surface is about 99,532,800 square miles.
This gives Golarion a surface area of about 50.5% of earth.
This assumes that the map is 1/16th the size of the world. Nothing says they can't change that.
ummm Golarion is not Earth???? maybe... so it just MIGHT be smaller?
It's true, Golarion is not Earth. However, it's common practice to assume that most of the background details of the "game planet" are as Earth-like as possible, to provide an easy frame of reference. This allows game designers who don't also happen to be geophysicists to put together as world with internal consistency and have some basis for deciding things like the underwater depth at which pressure may begin to cause damage to unprotected characters.
Players will inevitably have questions like "How far can I see if I fly up to 120 feet?" or "How many miles east do I need to teleport the vampire to land him in an area where it's already daylight?" The game is about the story, the adventure, not these details of measurement; you don't want to have to interrupt the game to figure stuff like that out from scratch.
The fact that I got an answer to my initial question at all from Mr. Schneider shows that the Pathfinder designers have paid some attention to this sort of thing, at least as a background detail. The reference to the (in Earth terms) Tropic of Cancer tells me that Golarion has an axial tilt that produces seasons, and in the absence of any other information I chose to place it at 23.5 degrees North because that's familiar in terms of the effects it has.
I was also told by Coridan that the distance from the white area at the top of the map to the Mana Wastes was about that from Iceland to the Tropic; but that'd be ~2900 miles and it looks to me as if the map scale suggests something closer to 940.
If I just shrug and say "It's a smaller planet" -- and it'd need to be a good deal smaller, I think -- one of two things happens: (1) I need to know how much smaller, so I can work out the math on some of the effects this would have; or (2) I abandon intenal consistency altogether and say "Reality notwithstanding, the planet is significantly smaller than Earth, but somehow acts like Earth in all other respects. Except where it doesn't, and that's fine." I'm sure that's what most gamers do, and it's perfectly reasonable that they should do so. Those folks will probably find this thread entirely pointless and probably shouldn't waste their time here. I started the thread because it's not a waste of time for me, and hoped there'd be a few other people who agreed.
did some quick measurements and the map is roughly 2,160 miles wide and 2,880 miles tall.
Am I looking at an outdated map? The one I've been using is pretty nearly square and measures about 1125 miles in each direction:
http://paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderChronicles/GolarionMap.jpg
|
|
did some quick measurements and the map is roughly 2,160 miles wide and 2,880 miles tall.Am I looking at an outdated map? The one I've been using is pretty nearly square and measures about 1125 miles in each direction:
http://paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderChronicles/GolarionMap.jpg
Also, that's not particularly square. The vertical edge is visibly longer, so I'd say Krome's measure is likely close.
LinkifiedAlso, that's not particularly square. The vertical edge is visibly longer, so I'd say Krome's measure is likely close.
Perhaps it's a "stretching" effect of my wide screen, but the image I see when I click on the above link is 8.5 inches square, checked with a ruler.
I'll pull out the paper map when I get home and redo my measurements off-screen.
That's a little mean, man.
He can't help it, being a dwarf and all.
|
|
The actual mapped dimensions, as opposed to paper dimensions, are 21" wide by 27.5" tall. I have it lying out here and measured it with a tape measure. 577.5 square inches. According to the bar, 2.25" = 240 miles.
About 9.3 of those measurements across..so what, 2239 miles across?
About 12.2 of those measurements high...oh, 2933 miles high?
Math isn't my strong point but I find the topic intriguing.
I would not be surprised to be totally in error here. Feel free to lambaste at will.
I should note this is the Inner Sea Region map from the Map Folio.
Creative Director
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I know you said James and them called that "clouds" at the top. But if that is the case, then they need to change more than the map. The Campaign Setting will need to be changed as well.
I called them clouds half jokingly. There's no need to change the campaign setting, but when we go north and map out the Crown of the World (the northern continent whose southern border more or less follows the shape of those "clouds"), you can be assured that it's not going to be a featureless white blob. There'll be more information and more detail on how things work at that boundary, but for now, maybe it's better to just think of them not as clouds but as "here's the edge of the map; beyond be monsters and yetis."
Besides, why does Golarion have to be the same size as Earth? No reason at all it can't be smaller.
As for why Golarion has to be the same size of Earth... that's because we don't have enough geologists, astronomers, historians, meteorologists, cartographers, geographers, sociologists, and other "-ists" on staff to make sure that if we set our campaign on a world that's drastically different in size or nature than Earth that we get things right. This is also why regions in Golarion sort of match up to regions on Earth; europe and the middle east and africa more or less correspond to Avistan and Qadira and Garund, for example.
By assuming earthlike weather, earthlike gravity, earthlike shape, and all the other earthlike features, we can turn our attention away from that kind of minutae and focus on telling stories. This is the exact same reason why humans are the dominant species on the planet; we all know how humans work and therefore we don't have to re-figure out what happens to a society if, say, the baseline race can breathe water or doesn't sleep or can fly or doesn't need to eat.
By assuming Golarion's basically the same as earth, we save us a LOT of headache on keeping canon right.
The fact that some elements of our regional map didn't take this into account is unfortunate, but not something we can't fix. ESPECIALLY since we've never officially located the equator or all that. We sort of know where they are, of course, but until we do actual work on building the rest of the planet... I'm not too worried about that (or about the fact that the distortion to land shape when you get near edges of maps).
|
Creative Director
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
CHALLENGE!
If someone wants to take the map of the inner sea region from the campaign setting and drop in lattitude lines, one assuming that the Mana Wastes line up with the tropic of cancer and maybe one assuming the north edge lines up with the arctic circle, and assuming Golarion's size = Earth's size, I would LOVE to see it! :-)
Another option: Assume Magnimar is at the same Lattitude as Seattle, Washington, then see where that leads you.
Maybe Golarion isn't a spheroid at all... maybe it's a cylinder. Beyond the Crown of the World lies... a cliff descending into eternity.
Or for even less realism... Golarion is a rectangular prism, aka flat earth. You could milk all the research from those flat-earth nutcases and apply it to Golarion! Then you wouldn't have to worry about map distortion or any of those pesky math things.
Guess you'd have to redo the art for Golarion's solar system, though.
CHALLENGE!
If someone wants to take the map of the inner sea region from the campaign setting and drop in lattitude lines, one assuming that the Mana Wastes line up with the tropic of cancer and maybe one assuming the north edge lines up with the arctic circle, and assuming Golarion's size = Earth's size, I would LOVE to see it! :-)
Well, this is in fact what I'm trying to do, but I'd more or less expected I'd be the only one interested in taking it that far. I'm happy to see I was wrong.
I'd used 65 deg N for the top edge of the map, as an approximation of Iceland's latitude. I'll try the Arctic Circle (66.56 deg N) and see what difference that makes, and then check that against Seattle-Magnimar. It sounds small, but at 69.04 miles per degree, that would be almost 108 miles, which IIRC is a shift of an inch or more on the map scale we're using.
James, what's your opinion on using either of the Chelaxian capitols as Longitude Zero? (I'm new to the setting and don't know offhand whether they became a major sea power before or after moving the capitol from Westcrown.)
|
Well from what James said in his challenge that would make it roughly 3100 miles from the mana waste north to the "clouds", which is roughly 22 inches on the fold out map laying flat. Which means each inch is roughly 140 miles then.
Each degree on latitude or longitude is 69 miles making each inch roughly 2 degree's. Which would make the very bottom of the map roughly at 14.5 degree's. Which is roughly the southern tip of Saudi Arabia or threw the middle of the Carribean islands.
where was the equator?
The equator is not on the Inner Sea region map; it's some distance below the bottom edge.
|
Creative Director
|
James, what's your opinion on using either of the Chelaxian capitols as Longitude Zero? (I'm new to the setting and don't know offhand whether they became a major sea power before or after moving the capitol from Westcrown.)
Longitude Zero should probably be Absalom, since that's the city at the center of the world and all and has been around longer than anything in Cheliax.
|
Creative Director
|
They already have instances in canon of people crossing over the crown of the world from Tian Xia (I'd personally rather take a boat, but I am not a Tien.)I'm pretty sure that going by boat is no less dangerous and would take a lot longer. If you started in Varisia, at least...
Yeah; when we did our calculations here at the office it was about 4 inches south of the bottom edge, I think, but I can't remember if we used the 4 panel map or the 8 panel map so that's more or less useless information now.
|
|
They already have instances in canon of people crossing over the crown of the world from Tian Xia (I'd personally rather take a boat, but I am not a Tien.)I'm pretty sure that going by boat is no less dangerous and would take a lot longer. If you started in Varisia, at least...
My thinking would be that there's a lot more friendly places to stop along the way, starting at Varisia and going down through the Inner Sea out towards Casmaron, but i don't know what it looks like past the Obari Ocean either. Plus you could make a good deal of money bringing cargo from city to city along the way.
Plus I hate cold weather.
Longitude Zero should probably be Absalom, since that's the city at the center of the world and all and has been around longer than anything in Cheliax.
That had been my first thought (see post #2 above) but the Cheliaxian cities were more Greenwich-y and therefore more familiar in terms of location, plus I wasn't (am not) familiar enough with the history to know how long Absalom has claimed that title, etc.
But first things first: latitude.
Okay, call this Map Math Test #1, in which we'll see whether it's practical for all of the following to be true on Golarion:
* The flat (northernmost) edge of the white area at the top of the Inner Sea map represents the Arctic Circle, at 65.5 deg N;
* Magnimar is on the same latitude as Seattle, WA (47.62 deg N);
* The Tropic of Cancer is a line that passes through the point where the Ustradi River crosses the southern Nexian border.
Starting measurements
*Inner Sea map (mapped area) measures 21” wide x 27.5” high
*Map scale is given as 2.25” = 240 miles (1” = 106.667 miles)
*Area shown would then be 2240 miles east-west by 3208 miles north-south
Distance from “Arctic Circle” (flat white edge) to Magnimar
= 7.25” (@ 106.667 mi/in = 773.336 miles; @ 69.04 mi/deg = 11.2 degrees of latitude)
Distance from Earth's Arctic Circle (66.5 N) to Seattle, WA (47.62 N)
= 18.88 degrees of latitude (@69.04 mi/deg = 1303.47 miles; @ 106.667 mi/in = 12.22”)
Best correspondence between Earth and Golarion synching the Arctic Circles with Seattle/Magnimar uses a map scale of 180 miles per inch rather than 106.667 miles per inch:
= 7.25” (@ 180 mi/in = 1305 miles; @ 69.04 mi/deg = 18.90 degrees of latitude)
At 180 mi/in, Tropic of Cancer will be how far south of Magnimar in inches?
Distance from Seattle, WA (47.62 N) to actual Tropic of Cancer (23.5 N)
= 24.12 degrees of latitude (@69.04 mi/deg = 1665.24 miles; @ 180 mi/in = 9.25”)
This means it would run through Osirion, Thuvia and Rahadoum, just north of Azir. So, that particular combination does not work if the placement of the Tropic south of Nex is important to the designers. I'll work out the next series while giving people a chance to comment.
|
|
They already have instances in canon of people crossing over the crown of the world from Tian Xia (I'd personally rather take a boat, but I am not a Tien.)
Krome's measurements are probably spot on, I was using the big wall poster map from the CS. 2400 miles = 2.25 inches
I used the map included with the community use files, opened the 2400 pixel one and used Photoshop to copy the scale and then pasted it across to get horizontal measurements and turned the scale 90 degrees and measured vertical on the map. It's not going to be 100% but darn close.
So, we have an "Official" statement that Golarion is roughly earth sized. So we ignore that 1/16th part and figure out the rest.
:)
I can live with that.
|
|
Quick and dirty in Google earth. No idea if scale is right. I just eyeballed it and said "that looks about right-ish"
**EDIT** Scooped! But mine has a picture!
ANd here is ROUGHLY Magnimar at the same as Seattle
Again not really sure at all about scale, just eyeballing it
**EDIT** **EDIT AGAIN**
An observation is that due to the distortion of curving, the scale, on my images, stretches to about 10 degrees wide, so roughly 690 miles! But due to the distortion I am not sure what to change. Anyone have suggestions?
**EDIT EDIT EDIT**
Okay one more just closer to seeing the Inner Sea as seen from 4069 feet in the air.
|
Creative Director
|
Hey James, in my Homebrew games I used lots of planets of different sizes. WHen anyone complained I just said "Magic!" and went on. Works wonders! lol
That might well work with your group. It would probably work with my group. Alas... Golarion is for everyone else's group as well, and some of them are pickier. :-)
|
|
Hey James, in my Homebrew games I used lots of planets of different sizes. WHen anyone complained I just said "Magic!" and went on. Works wonders! lolThat might well work with your group. It would probably work with my group. Alas... Golarion is for everyone else's group as well, and some of them are pickier. :-)
Rovagug is at the planet's core, after all, thus Golarion can have however much mass and gravitational acceleration as you care to give it, whatever the surface area.